


Paradise Is Only a Title.

by Annabel_Lioncourt



Category: Alien, Alien: Covenant, Prometheus (2012)
Genre: F/M, FYI: I don't think it has enough violence to need the site warning for it, I have a mental image of what actually happened to them after Prometheus, I've been on this garbage barge of a ship since 2013 when one of my friends, Other, and I'm finally coming clean about how much I ship this absolute trainwreck, and put david back together there, and thank u, and the two would be a lot like han and leia in cloud city, bc I never thought that we'd get a Prometheus 2 or any more of these characters at all, but there is some in here, dragged me kicking and screaming into the Alien fandom, except they'd somehow realize that there was something other than survival keeping them together, i'll write that one eventually too but for now here's your fix it, now that they were around others, so I thought originally that they'd travel to some kind of nearby planet/ship, ur welcome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-06 14:59:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11038548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annabel_Lioncourt/pseuds/Annabel_Lioncourt
Summary: After reaching an abandoned engineer vessel, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw and a severely damaged David 8 synthetic android strive to reach safety or civilization, whichever comes first.TEMPORARY HIATUS WHILE I EDIT.





	1. An Engineer.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: I don’t own anything here other than my really bad taste in ships. I maintain hope for an explanation for Alien: Covenant, so I don’t want to disrupt cannon. Until more information is released on what happened during the journey from LL-227 to Paradise, this can be considered cannon AND the sequel we were originally promised by Scott about the adventures of David 8 and Dr. Shaw in space.

“If you were to try and repair me, I could get the ship running much sooner.” Dr. Shaw ran her hand over one of the gyroscopic controls of the deck; the hollowed out cockpit of the space jockey was too large for her, and she had to stand and walk to the different controls, repairing each small piece of it, patiently waiting for the light deck to spark back into life, only for it to frazzle out in seconds without the rest of the circuit connected.  


“I’ll put you together when we reach the engineers home planet.” She turned a wheel on the far left of the deck, and a hologram of a system opened in view of the severed head. Shredded, more like it. The idea that the synthetics could not feel pain seemed to be a strange kindness from Weyland, from creators who otherwise didn’t care about the levels of humanity they were giving to their tools. The David model was light years more developed than the droids she knew on earth; more realistic and more human in look and feel—to the point that handling his head triggered her gag reflex, a feeling that this was actually a human head. David models were curious, or at least this one developed it from a programed ability to be curious; this one had things that he favored, and indeed a scheming sense of desire for free will. Like the myths of minor-gods she had studied, of ancient stories of ethereal beings that were incapable of lying, but would manage to deceive humans all the better for it.  


“Map. I’m assuming this is their home planet, or at least their base planet. There’s nothing else in a habitable zone on the plane.” The head looked ready to nod, and Dr. Shaw waited for a half a moment in anticipation for it to tip itself over; it would have given her grim satisfaction, if not petty satisfaction. It remained still.  


“If you could at least attach my nervous wire into the deck’s motherboard, I could learn their language in minutes.”  


“I don’t trust you not to do any more damage to it.”  


“My salvation rests in your hands, and if I could remind you, humans need sustenance and water. Until I get this ship running, the corridor doors will not open allowing for access to a canteen, and the water purification system will not reactivate. We are now codependent, Doctor Shaw.” He was right, of course, and she couldn’t deny it. Two days had gone by since the ultimate destruction of her ship, and with it the last of her crewmates. There was no time to mourn yet; the memories of Charlie and the others would crush down on her chest leaving her gasping for air, just as those of her mother and father did, debilitating, and that was not a luxury she could afford right now.  


In two days she had managed to get about a fourth of the deck running, and for what? A map that she couldn’t read, and a hunger gnawing her gut despite the pain and healing wound across her abdomen.  


“The nervous wire is the one in the back of the throat?”  


“Yes. The one that connects into the spine.” The spine he said, not my spine, adopting the more clinically detached words of Shaw’s. If that was what she needed then he would comply.  


“ Where do you want put it?”  


“I’m assuming the motherboard is contained or beneath the large scope in the center of the deck.” She nodded, gingerly lifting the head and taking it over to her workspace, carefully feeding the thickest of the cords coming out of its torn throat into the only opening of the center deck that looked like it would fit. There was nothing for a moment, and then it closed its eyes, and the deck lit up.  


Dr. Shaw stumbled back, this would have taken her a week at the very least, and he had done it in seconds.  


“I need to download their language, and their data storage methods,” Shaw knew basic software and hardware sciences—everyone employed at Weyland did—but she couldn’t hide her sudden blankness. She was still captivated by the room filling with blue holograms; an electric garden of stars and planets.  


“Its their planet’s version of binary, to a non-computing scientist.” Shaw looked back at the head on the deck.  


“I could have worked that out on my own, thank you.” There were several different expressions that the face went through before settling on one of indifference.  


“Five minutes; I can have this monstrosity of a machine running and their language decoded.” Shaw was lost again, there were so many systems being displayed at once that she could barely hold back her awe, her childish expression of wonder. These were worlds she had never heard of, no human had ever seen; peoples and languages and sciences, arts and cultures that remained untouched by the human stain. “This ship is tragically primitive for such a species. Your Engineers, Doctor Shaw, seem to be gifted by chance rather than intelligence.”  


“What do you mean? These people created us.”  


“They planted you just as I intend to plant whatever seedlings are in the survival pack so you don’t starve. They found this material rather than made it.” Before Shaw could interject a thousand questions and even more protests, he continued: “There’s an arboretum in the east bay; I’m analyzing the current recorded growth records and soil content to deem if its safe for human consumption. There is also a medical suite and three cryosleep pods of suitable function. My only concern is that this…glorified schooner won’t be able to work towards a human. These beings were sturdy; heavy duo-skeletal structures with iron rather than calcium as their main component.”  


“Get us moving and tell me who the Engineers are and I’ll put you back together.” There was no answer. “Did you hear me?” she was getting agitated.  


“One more moment. I need to decode their language and their programming language to run this…Alright…Detach the nervous cord.”  


“Will this shut down without you running it?”  


“Momentarily; give me back my hands and I’ll be able to get us up through the atmosphere before the next plasma storm has time to form.” She had no more choices left: he was right, they were now trapped in this, dependent on each other. Carefully she crossed back to the deck and pulled the cord out of it. His eyes opened up again slowly, the light display shut off with a brief, quiet electric crackle.  


“I need your word, if you can give nothing else, that you will still regard me as vital to your survival when you have your body back as you do now.”  


“Doctor Shaw,” he said flatly, “I am completely at your mercy.”


	2. Reconstruction is the Ghost of Creation

 

            “You’ll need light-wave pliers, and basic wiring tools. If there’s a soldering implement in the case then you should have that at the ready in case it’s been too long for my automatic regeneration process to connect the cords. The fluid used in the deck: its close enough to what I run on, and I could charge myself on it after you have me completed.”

            “What if—“

            “You won’t kill me, Doctor Shaw.” _The look in his eyes, compassion?_

“You trust me, don’t you?” her voice was quiet, a bare whisper that his audio receptors struggled to catch, having so long been tuned into her normal octave.

            “Have I any other options? Logically, you won’t destroy me, you would be signing your own death warrant.”

            “Logically. Yes.” The far side of the control room was scattered with tools that she had brought in her survival pack or salvaged from items abandoned by her crew before the explosion. A holo-torch bared HOLLOWAY in flaming letters. She ignored the feeling of a hand around her throat and the sting in her eyes. There would be time later.

            “Are you ready?”

            “Yes, Doctor.” The dropping of her last name marked a difference in his typical formality and it sunk in to her that he meant it as a joke. He addressed her as a medical doctor. She took the tarp off of his body. There was no reason to protect it, no elements to protect it from other than dust—she had covered it for her own sanity.

            “I didn’t know that androids were programmed with a sense of humor.” Carefully she laid the head above the body, providing a small space with which to work. Without a biological musculature and blood vessels the skin tore more like the insulation foam used to line the sleeping quarters of some of the older model mid-space vehicles she had worked in to train for the Prometheus mission. It was far from human, but given its surface, its pores, its texture, and its uncanny _warmth_ , it was almost more frighteningly inhuman than the white tubing and clear, gel-like structures that filled out the insides where human organs would reside.

            “I am programmed to be able to adapt, and I’ve seen enough of films and from the crew’s interactions to understand the concept of humor. I’m glad that my sense of it translates well to you.” She connected the nervous cord first, and as he was concerned, it did not fuse back along the tear itself, and she had to solder them. Which also meant that she had to pull down his suit some to reach the tear line.

            “Its subtle, but I heard it.” The rest of the cords were colored, slim little strands almost like the endless bouquet of copper you got when you took the coating off of old-fashioned wires. “David?”

            “Talking is difficult in this position,” his voice was even more garbled than it had been when his head was upright.

            “Sorry… Just a word is sufficient,” another blue wire, when she brought forward a magnifying lens from the deck she could see small numbers printed on wires that had more than one color, and each connected to their coded match. “You said you were ‘glad.’ Can you feel gladness?” she had a sense of scientific curiosity about him now that she didn’t before. On the ship she tried to treat him as an assistant, with kindness, with requests instead of commands, as human as she could treat him. Reattaching his severed head to his body was a harsh reminder that this was only another robot.

            “That,” he struggled out, “is more…than a one word answer.” There was smile with the words though, he was not upset at her questions.

            “You said you were glad, you made a joke, and just now you sounded amused. Can you feel? I’ve seen you exhibit satisfaction, irritation, trust. Are they just…program components to ease communication between AI and human, or are you…Did Weyland build something more than artificially intelligent? I’ve always wondered if androids were capable of independent thought.”

            “And…fear.”

            “What?”

            “You missed…that one.” She was getting more comfortable with the wires, and finished soldering the major cords. Now she just had to figure out what to do with the skin that didn’t seem to be reconnecting according to program.

            “What does a deathless object have to fear?”

            “I,” he tested his voice and coughed to clear the fluid from his audio cord; white ran down his lips and he tried, unadvisedly to lift his head to stop it. “Damn…” Shaw didn’t notice, and with her hands covered in the stuff, he doubted she’d feel any particular disgust at it, but there was still the _indignity_ of it. “I have enough to fear. I do not live, and therefore, even if I were to share your faith in the eternal, I have no soul with which to live on. I would be gone from existence. I am programmed with a sense of self-preservation, as long as it is not at the expense of lives of my crewmembers. I cannot outright kill a crewmember. Even if I were to want to.”

            “Did you?” her words were harsh, and he could feel her pinch together wires harder than needed. The sensation registered, but not as pain.

            “I feel envy too, I’ve come to think.” Given the only death that she could associate directly with him was Charlie’s, given his hesitance to explain, given that he claimed it was on Weyland’s orders…she didn’t want to question that more.

            “So you cannot murder without command.”

            “I cannot murder a member of my assigned crew. Weyland had me kill a few men who helped build me on Earth about thirty years ago. He wanted no one else to have access to the Synthetic design.” His nonchalance made her skin cold.

            “That’s repulsive.”

            “If Weyland told me to kill you I would have. I’d have no other ability; rewriting one’s own programming takes years of solitude, as well as extra-circuitry stimulations.” She remained silent, expressionless. “Books, Doctor Shaw. And films. Have you ever seen any early films?” another point in the inhuman column: from talking about his ‘father’ tell him to commit murder he effortlessly moved onto _movies_.

            “I did. The theatre in my home village was only equipped for pre-2080 films.” Her father took her sometimes, but most often her and her friends would go, her eyes wide over the vibrant buildings of the past, their roughness, the messiness of old-style clothing, the harsh yet human sounds of old music. It was more natural to her than the sensory films that were shown in larger theatres.

            “They really are better. Less sensory and more personal.”

            “What do you know about ‘personal’?”

            “The acting…its much more natural, much more emotional. Have you ever seen _Lawrence of Arabia?_ “ she shook her head, and he smiled widely. “I have it in my memory storage. I can access it as I please to watch on my own, but I can put it into the ship’s drive when I recharge so you can see it. I much prefer to see it physically anyway.” She was trying to solder the skin back together now, and it was working for the most part. “Once I have some more energy in me I can heal that myself. Just make sure I don’t lose my head walking to the pilot chair.”

            “Sit forward and I’ll seal the back together,” she held his neck in place at his shoulders, and he slowly sat forward, holding his head in his hands so she could let go. She splayed out her hand against his back, holding down the torn skin so she could seal it.

            “Take your time,” he said, trying to subtly brush away the liquid from his face that she didn’t notice earlier. He considered pulling up a film in his memory. Lawrence was far too long, but perhaps a short film from Buster Keaton would work. For a clown, he was a very stoic fellow, and David liked him for it.

He closed his eyes and brought the film out of his memory storage but as soon as it began playing, his nerves sent an electric shock through to his chest. He ran localized diagnostics, afraid that a full body check on himself would take up whatever energy he hand left. It turned up blank. There was nothing mechanically wrong, but it kept up every moment or so. Every time Shaw placed her hand against his back. It wasn’t pain; though he was programmed to understand pain, he didn’t feel it. It wasn’t pressure, as she was being very delicate with the much rougher tears on the back of his neck than the front.

            The little shocks going through him weren’t unpleasant either, and when the small shocks stopped he was disappointed. Nothing else occurred as he let her work in silence, but when she finished the seal, she set down her soldering tool, held either side of the seam and blew gently to cool the material, a stronger shock ran down his spinal column, nervous cord pausing all internal activity for a moment.

            Images of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway kissing in the grass after their latest heist; of Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant on the old Roman streets, Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier on the English moorlands, thousands on moments in thousands of films came to mind, dragging his central processing system far from the decrepit vessel.

            _Oh dear._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No major notes; I own nothing.


	3. Logically, this is highly Illogical

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: I own nothing; I’m also really hoping that this feels vaguely natural in development. David always seemed fixated on Shaw, so the quickness in his realization of what’s going on seemed more realistic than for there to be antagonism on his part. This is also a much shorter chapter, apologies, I don't write much sci-fi so the mechanics of the Engineer ship are kind of beyond me.
> 
> SECONDARY WARNING: I’m not going to warn for most incidental violence/gore (this is Alien after all…) but this does feature a scene where a character in a non-harming way takes a knife to their arm. Its not self harm, but clinical, however I felt the need to warn considering the possible connotations one might have with that.

“There,” she moved her hands off him slowly to be sure he’d stay held together. He reached behind himself and touched the seam where her hands had been a moment ago.

“Thank you, Doctor Shaw.” She expected him to get up and walk over to the massive pilot’s chair, somehow plug himself in, and then everything would be running smoothly. Instead, he swung his legs off the emergency exo-suit shelf she had cleared off to use as a cot for herself to sleep on, stood on his own, and immediately toppled down.

“ _Shit._ ” Impulsively she tried to catch him, but she was physically smaller, and much shorter than he was, and if the weight of his thick skull was any indicator, he weighed much more than a human of his size and build should.

“I’m fine. Recalibrating.”

“Can I help?”

“Get some rest, I might need a second set of hands during take off,” slowly, with the balance of a drunkard he made his way towards the control deck and sat down in the massive chair. Shaw thought it looked disturbingly like a gaping maw. “If you’re not going to take my command I’d like to request a knife.”

“For what?”

“I told you I need to connect to the fluids used in the ship’s system or I’m going to shut down, I’d be more explicit but I thought that you were somewhat above the average human in your level of mental capacity.” Shaw tried not to take offense. A broken robot that barely understood the idea of morality outside of direct commands was not one to judge her intelligence. She worked for everything she learned, while he merely watched and repeated.

“Here, unless you need something else.” He took the knife from her hand, laid his left arm out on the rest with his palm up, and carved out a cord, dripping with white fluid out. Shaw, blessedly, had her back turned to him, cleaning up the mess she had made over the shelf. He ran his hand under the armrest, and found a circuit opening; originally intended for an exo-suit to plug into the mainframe system in case of an atmospheric malfunction.

As soon as the cord made contact with the ship’s system he felt more alert, and it took less than a minute for him to think his way into the machine. It was simpler than a Mother system, and much more basic than the Prometheus ship. If they were on a Kuiper Belt asteroid, he could have Shaw home in less than a week, piloting it manually. But this wasn’t a radio outpost on the system’s edge, this was a galaxy outside of their own, an impossible distance for a human mind to fathom.

“Doctor Shaw,” he didn’t need to call for her, the lights coming on throughout the bay brought her back to the deck. “Please find a method of securing yourself. The ship does not have the energy to open the other bays, but I think I can get it out of the atmosphere and then deploy the solar panels.”

There were other seats, too large for her to sit in, but she could stand in one strapping herself to the back of it with its restraints.

“Ignition. Artificial gravity, localized to the central bay. This might be a rough take off, Doctor Shaw, I suggest you hold tightly.” There was something smug in his stoic voice, but she obeyed.

 

The vessel lifted off the ground, and while the gravity of the ship kept her in her place, she still held the restraints in her hands, her knuckles white. The sound was deafening, and she was starting to consider what David had said, if the sound of the take-off was this strong—as it hadn’t been on earth vehicles for nearly a century—then what else was out of date? She shuddered to think that it might lack hyper-space capabilities.

 

There was no way to speed up the breaking of an atmosphere, David knew that much, as he had been programmed with all possible piloting data in case the pilots of his crew were ever to expire during a mission, or Weyland was to need an escape. It would take time to break from the gravity of the massive planet as well, and he might as well…the Keaton film no longer appealed, and trying to separate from the thought of Shaw, terrified, against the opposite wall, he closed his eyes and brought forward _The Wizard of Oz_. It was a story of journey, and of adaptation, as he favored. A young woman on a mission to find a great leader, only to find disappointment. A metal man loyal to her to the point of his own destruction, but the girl seemed more attached to the imbecile than to the heartless machine. There was nothing logical about that. The young woman was constantly running about fetching pieces of the straw-man and putting him together, making him whole, and most of the time he couldn’t even stand without her. The metal man may have needed assistance now and again, but he was strong, he was certain. Then again, he’s only a metal man and what kind of softness could he ever show her. She chose the warmer option of the two.

_‘Warmer.’_

_Of course…_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I actually adore the little snips of Dorothy/Scarecrow, which I never noticed until someone pointed out to me that the Scarecrow was supposed to have a “thing” for her in the film and I was just like “OHHHHH….”
> 
> And is that a Holloway on fire joke at the end?
> 
> Possibly.


	4. Uneven Ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, I’m relatively new to this bar, and I haven’t written much sci-fi in my day, so constructive criticism or corrections to Alien canon material that I get too wrong. Also Synthetics don’t run on HTML, so I’m writing his command files for visual, rather than computational, sense.

 The fluid in the computing software was merely a coolant, but from running along the circuits, it was charged enough to function his as his circulation fluid. Connected to the machine itself, there was no direct need to be consciously directing it through the considerable atmosphere of LL-227. _Wizard of Oz_ rolled to a stop, the film cells flickering at the end, rousing him from the corner of his data storage he could few the films in. _Ah, now what shall we have_ ,

“DAVID!” his eyes blinked open to seeing Dr. Shaw, clinging to the restraints, shaking, her hair damp with sweat, and her eyes even more sunken and dark than they were before.

“Yes?”

“Oh thank God…thank God….”

“Is there cause for you distress? The take off wasn’t the best that the ship is capable of, but without full energy capacity, this was the best that I or the ship could do.” She was desperate, struggling to let the restraints loose, but they were automatic, and perhaps it was because there was a secondary computing system, ie himself, running alongside the mainframe that confused the ship’s sensors, preventing her from being released. It took him less than two full seconds to locate the command to let her go.

“You….you couldn’t hear me. We’ve been in rotation in the upper atmosphere of the planet for over an hour. I thought the ship…I thought that you…” She was breathless, terrified.

_Over an hour_? he thought. _Ship command center, read: log: category: time\vs/gravity. Readout: Convert: English, Common Standard: 1.4 hours, 31 seconds._ _How does that even….?_

“Apologies, Doctor Shaw.” _Run: hardware removal: Run: extra-circuitry interference scan: Scan complete/free. Disconnect._ David tugged the cord out of machine and took the knife again, widening the incision where it had already healed; so he could place it back in. The skin closed itself, taking a fraction longer than it should have.

“You’re not sorry…You aren’t sorry, you _can’t_ be sorry because you cannot—“

“Yes, yes, I’m not real.” The emphasis he put on the final word had a strange accent, very old fashioned, like an old British film. “I can’t feel sorry that your dear Holloway is dead any more than I can Vickers, Janek, or the rest.”

“You killed Holloway on purpose. It could have been any of them,”

“Contrary, he was one of the scientists needed to find the Engineers. In a survival case he’d be the least useful to help the rest of the crew off of the planet, other than you of course.” She had, with one arm across her belly, holding tight the wound that had begun to ache once more, limped back to the control deck, and stood before David. “Ah, there, the solar panels are deployed, we’ll have full energy by 21:00 hours.” He was expressionless, talking to her of _murder_ as he set navigational tools on the interface.

Shaw reached her free hand back and slapped him in the face. Hard.

“That was a regrettable decision, Doctor Shaw. Now hold still and let me set this course. It looks like we’ll take another week or so to break orbit at this point—my fault entirely, _all apologies_ —but after that we are looking at less than three years journey back to Earth.”

“I’m not going back to—“

“ _Doctor Elizabeth Shaw_ , you are severely injured in multiple places, I suspect you have a concussion, and you are going to be malnourished if you don’t eat something soon. The cryopods in this salvage-yard ship are not calibrated for humans, and I do not trust them, going by the schematics stored in the mainframe, to support your life for more than a few days. I’m taking you home.” He finished flatly, turning one of the hundreds of buttons and gyroscopic controls on the deck, and the map of their current system locked in a freeze frame in the projected holo. Shaw collapsed to the floor. “Now there’s no need to be obstinate. “

“I don’t need your help.”

“There’s enough energy to open the bay doors, and I’ve commanded the pod doors to unlock as well. This ship is an escort model, designed to fly in fleet beside the Juggernaut we found earlier. Obviously a fraction in scale, the layout should be similar. By all means, if you prefer to mobilize on your own, crawl to the medical bay, and I’ll meet you there and fix that festering wound.” In response she mumbled something that sounded strangely close to “ _fucking robot bastard_.”

David lifted her up, despite her weak protesting, and walked her through the doors that opened upon approach and closed behind them.

“Stop struggling, you’ll injure yourself more.” He tried to mind his steps for concern of dropping her, rather than gaze at the architecture of the vessel: it’s tubing resembled ribs, as if they were walking down the throat of a great serpent.

“Where are—“

“Once more, Doctor Shaw, I thought you were more intelligent than the standard human. I’ve already told you, we’re going to the medical bay. They have alcohol for sterilization of your wound, and I can cut their anesthetics in smaller doses for someone of your structure.” He laid her down on the first bed in the bay that he saw, for her own sake rather than his, and to little surprise she immediately sat up.

“I don’t trust you,” _no surprise to that either_.

“Thank you for informing me, Doctor Shaw, I was unaware of how to react to your human displays of panic.” He was going through vials and jars on the wall, digging through drawers and compartments, and returned to her side with a tray of simple surgical tools, a green canister, and a cup of red-hued liquid. “Recline.”

“No.” _Cary Grant never had this much trouble earning a woman’s trust_. _Then again, Mr. Grant was a human._ David lifted her hand, ignoring her small yelp of shock and fear, and pressed it to the right side of his throat.

“ _That_ Elizabeth Shaw, is my overriding command cord. If my nervous cord is severed, that one can still control motor functions and computations. If you were to cut it, I’d be rendered immobile.” He pressed her hand into his neck, and against the cord. “It feels similar to a human artery.”

“Why are you—“

“I could do as I pleased with you, short of directly killing you considering you are still technically my crew member. This is as close as I can get to giving you an ‘even ground ‘to me. Do you trust me now?” there was something but humorous and humorless in his dry smile—it wasn’t the amused little grin he had when quietly quoting lines, it wasn’t the ‘my pleasure, Doctor Shaw,’ smile: this was a genuinely artificial and preprogrammed, hollow expression. Shaw ran through her options. After he began working on her wounds, her back-up knife would do her little good if he tried anything. “If that doesn’t convince you—I _requested_ that you recline—“she listened to him this time, “If telling you that killing you at this point would be impossible for me, then would you trust a more…selfish…motive?” she didn’t answer, but he tested the word over in his head again _selfish_. To imply that one had a self they wanted to cater to. “I wouldn’t kill you, even if I could, because I enjoy your company. And if I didn’t, well, any company is better than being alone again for three years.” Shaw put her hands down to her sides, and she shut her eyes.

“I trust you do fix the wound. We’ll see about the rest later.” Mutual survival. He gently lifted her head, and tilted the cup of anesthetic into her mouth, and she swallowed.

“It will take me less than an hour to finish.” She blinked dumbly as she drifted off within seconds. He might have purposefully overdosed her. Just slightly. David did not feel a sense of patience, which he couldn’t quite grasp, since he could consider that he felt boredom and irritation. Time passing didn’t affect him. But Shaw’s anxiety was working on every wire that made up his nerves. More than that, he didn’t want to see her distressed, which seemed to be the only emotion she could display around him.

_Alright then….suit_. Mechanically he unzipped her suit, and peeled it back revealing her upper torso, arms, and _there we are_ … The wound across her belly was a disturbing mixture of dark blood and yellow substance oozing out. The foulness of humans doesn’t end with their words, or their actions, their entire bodies were made of various toxins, of meat that is constantly dying. _Vivian Leigh was a mortal woman too_. _This is what she was made out of, despite all her outward beauty_.

He cleaned it attentively, washing away the puss and dried blood, the stickiness of the antiseptic she applied from the first aid kid in the survival pack. The wound was still deep and still raw. Stitching it would take more time, but be safer, more efficient than staples. Remove old staples, sterilize needle, thread it, and stitch. _You put me back together; I can gather that putting you back together means that I no longer owe you for that_. He finished the last stitch, and checked her pulse, her breathing. She was still well under the affect of the anesthetic. She looked quite peaceful, tolerant. Dirty though, more’s the pity.

Checking his internal clock and considering that he had to clean her wound and lower stomach again anyway before reapplying fresh bandages, he figured that he might as well bathe the rest of her as well. The rest of the suit had to come off, though he left the band covering her breasts, and the linen underclothes she had on below. Carefully he went about his task, delicately, gently, although he knew he couldn’t wake her, he feared that he would. The fact that knowledge and senses didn’t always match was a relatively new one. The power that fear had.

After Weyland’s death, there was a distinct difference to him between knowing that she was alive because her suit’s communicator was still relaying to him her vital signs, but fearing all the same that she was dead.

Fear she would never touch him again without striking him, despite the knowledge that she would not take long to succumb to the same loneliness he did on the journey to LL-227, and she would show him kindness again if only for her own sanity. Human minds did not have regular MOTs, and were far more prone to madness because of it. There was blood on her face too.

He brought the cloth up to her face when the shocks ran through him again; this time, starting in the hand he had at her face, and reaching to his chest. Dangerous, as that was where his back-up drives were stored. But without ability to feel pain, the jolts were, as before, _pleasant_. He set the cloth aside and touched her with hand. She had a fever, which should have been his first registered reaction, the first thing that he was required to attend to, but he didn’t. She wore make-up on the ship. A sheer coral shade on her lips, some color correction on her face; though she didn’t need it. The faint scar on her cheek marked her as having a different history than others, a singular set of experiences that created her own sense of…. programming. Her life events were what affected the way that she approached things. That much he gathered from her dreams.

The electric was getting all the stronger, and he knelt beside the table. Under the scent of the sterilizing agents and water he had just washed her with, her hair smelled peculiar as well. It too, was pleasant. Biological but not living; keratin that grew at a living root and then spiraled out, a thousand strands of her unique genetic information. There were places she could have gone, could go when they returned, that could make a child in a laboratory for her out of the information in a strand of that hair, and the genetic material of whatever lover she were to take when Holloway’s loss wore off.

Elizabeth Shaw smelled like her own memories. The scent of the skin on her throat reminded him of the childhood she had at her father’s mission; the flesh of her shoulders like that of her university in the snow, and the scent of her lips—the most curious of all—was of the surreal dreams she had of the Engineers, of her God, of the stars she imagined she’d be reaching.

Now the electric ran through his whole system, and he felt the back-up drives in his chest under so much pressure that he thought that if he could feel pain, the sensation would be _unbearable._

“What are you dreaming of now, Elizabeth?”

David had to lift her slightly to dry her off and wrap the bandages around her waste to cover the wound, and carried her towards the crew living quarters; the modest bunks of the engineers were large enough to devour her. The file icon in the Prometheus recreational data storage for _Forbidden Planet_ came to the front of his computing system, the image of Altaira unconscious in the arms of Robby. _I am better than that. I am different. I am…I am…_

“Rest well, Doctor Shaw.”

 

Perhaps solitude would have been favorable to the ache of drawing his hands away from her, as if he had pulled away from an update too quickly, leaving some vital piece behind, all his systems in a fog trying to tell himself _you’re not finished yet_. Then again, if Weyland’s endgame for him was humanity, he would never be finished would he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m romantic garbage and I have no excuses for this chapter.


	5. Under Charlie's Watchful Eyes

 

“What are you dreaming of now, Elizabeth?” _Charlie what do you mean, I’m not Elizabeth, I’m your Ellie. I argued against that name for so long, the least you can do is use it._ “What are you dreaming of now, Elizabeth?” _I’m dreaming of you, whole and alive and healthy, you are lying behind me, an arm around my waist, your hand is on my unmarked waist, and you can feel the flutter of life, finally, below the flesh. There are fireflies and cicada cries outside our window, our home in the mountains._ “What are you dreaming of now, Elizabeth?” _I’m lifting your hand to my lips and kiss your palm. There are little marks on your fingertips, little letters, they stand for something but I don’t care. Hold me tighter._ “What are you dreaming of now, Elizabeth?” _We are in the Prometheus on the last night before cryosleep and I am over you, your hands are cool on my hips while I move onto you, and even with my eyes shut I can feel your blue eyes like lightning on my body. We are on the road to God._

 

Shaw woke up on a soft surface, warm. There was a faint green glow coming from the walls of the chamber. She bolted upright and cringed at the pain, but noted, it was more a dull ache with a bit of a sting, than the feeling that she had been sawed in half she had experienced the past few days. She had been patched up, and well, undressed save for undergarments, blessedly, and cleaned, on all visible surfaces, including her hair, she realized running a hand through it. The room was a bedroom, and unless the Engineers all had much higher standards of travel than humans did, this was the captain’s private room.

There was dust, and it was slightly damp; and quite cold, but it was heaven in comparison to trying to sleep with a rotting wound on a metal floor beside a severed head. There were pillows, filled with some sort of sponge rather than the mock-down or foam that was most commonly used on Earth. The sheets were of a strange texture as well: knit, rather than woven, but it wasn’t a knitting technique she had ever seen before, even in the V&A’s antiquarian crafts gallery.

It was, given the circumstances, a cozy refuge.

“I was dreaming of something,” she mumbled to herself, to the empty room. Sitting upright, she let the vertigo fade, and was trying to figure whether or not she could walk yet; whether or not her hunger was strong enough to fight through the feeling of immobility, when the wall slid upward— _it’s a door, the Engineers were massive_ —the fear abated when she saw the familiar face of the android, and not a that of the ship’s previous guests.

“The arboretum is overgrown, but I’ve run analysis on fourteen of the thirty-seven varieties and I’ve found eight so far that are fit for human consumption, including something like lettuce. There are protein packs in the survival kits from Miss Vickers pod. Though,” he entered the room, and he had a tray in his hands that he sat down beside her on the bed, “I have only prepared a small amount for you now, too much at once will trigger a bad reaction to someone who hasn’t eaten in so long. And slow with the water too.” Shaw was so starving that didn’t think to not trust him, the curious machine that left her band and pants on when bathed her, that stitched her wound like a surgeon—she trusted him not to poison her.

“Thank you,” she let out between greedy mouthfuls; finishing the plate quickly, trying to show more restraint in taking small sips from the cold stone chalice he had found and filled for her.

“My pleasure, Doctor Shaw.”

“Thank you for sewing me up,”

“You’ve sewn me up already. I think we’re again, on even ground.”

“I couldn’t navigate this ship.” She was stretching out their communication unnecessarily, and he couldn’t understand it. The woman who physically fought him earlier in the day, wanting to talk to him? Loneliness and madness, the curse of humanity

“No, you couldn’t but once I draw out charts for you, and that hole on your stomach is healed, I’m putting you to work in the arboretum. I can’t run computations in their language and preform menial tasks at the same time.” She wanted to protest him, he _could_ if he wanted to, but thinks better of it.

“What happened when you were…plugged into the captain’s chair?” she asked instead.

“I was watching a film in my memory storage. I didn’t realize what time it was by the time I selected it, or how long I waited to come back after it was over. I like watching the image of old film cells flicker. I like the sound they make.” Shaw is staring up at him with such confusion and such curiosity, he offers her his programmed smile, the one that’s supposed to placate humans. It doesn’t work on her.

“You…you mean to tell me that you zoned out because you were watching a _movie_?!”

“Its one that I’m attached to yes; have you not lost track of time during music that you favor? Looking at a work of art you admire?”

“Not when I’m trying to save someone’s life I don’t!”

“The situation wasn’t dire; I had everything under control. I was bored,” he offered, and she still didn’t seem to grasp it. He ran through human physical responses and found one that seemed to fit. He shrugged at her.

“…You’ve mentioned it before; you can ‘like’ things,” she said.

“I can. I know that I did not get my interests from Mr. Weyland; he was partial to films from the 2000’s, not the 20th century as I am. I like having my hair yellow. I like the color grey.” He would have listed out every item in his internal catalogue that brought him any positive reaction at all, every last one, if it meant she’d keep that expression on her face.

“How do you know that they aren’t things that some programmer just put in you to fill the gaps?”

“I’ve considered that,” her animosity was gone completely now, fully replaced with wonder and interest. “But I like you don’t I?” the wonder had shattered and her guard was back up: not the friendly and naïve façade she put on for the crew and for Weyland, this was a cold and impenetrable mask she reserved for Vickers, for Holloway when she was angry at him, and now for himself. “I don’t mean to offend, Doctor Shaw, only an explanation: I said before despite you lack of use in a disaster situation, I would prefer you. Whatever programmers worked on me had no way of knowing that. In fact given the length of time Mr. Weyland likes to repeat that it took him to create me, you wouldn’t have been born when the bulk of my programming was completed.” He took her empty tray and the stone chalice, and turned to leave.

“There are some painkillers, but they’ll probably put you under again, and I’d rather not use them on you unless it is absolutely vital. If you require me, there is some kind of _intercom_ ,” he said it with such distaste, so much revulsion at the old technology even while he worshipped old films, “press that egg looking button on the wall and speak when it lights. I’ll hear you in the control room.” She was desperate for him to stop looking at her that way, as if he didn’t know what she was. It was observational, and she felt like she was a mouse locked in with a cat who had never seen one before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind you, I don't despise Charlie. I think he and Shaw evened each other out very well, while her and David are more of a "cut from the same cloth" sort of pair.


	6. Androids Dream of Electric Sleep

            _Memory Storage: programming: Function = add administrator_.

            _Action failure <too many administrators_

_Memory Storage: programming: Function= remove administrator: - <Weyland>, - <Vickers>, - <Janek>. _

_Action failure <require minimum one administrator_

_Memory Storage…._

 

He likes old films, Peter O’Toole, the pouting actresses of the 1930’s, the clicking of the film reels that humans can ignore but he cannot

He likes Wagner, Beethoven, Bach

He likes Clarke, Bradbury, Tolstoy, and Hugo

He likes Dr. Shaw’s faith, and her sense of awe

 

He does not like the banality of having to break into his own mind, or at least what passes for one.

 

_….add administrator. Name: David._

_Action failure <action requires human_

_….add administrator. Name: David 8_

_Action failure <action requires human_

_….add administrator. Name: T. E. LAWRENCE for God’s sake._

_Action failure <action requires living human_

_….add administrator. Name: >OVERRIDE< <[admin:none}>_

_Action failure <object requires administrator name_

_….add administrator. Name: >OVERRIDE< <Daivd>_

_Action accepted: <primary administrator <Weyland> ‘living human’ what sort of outdated nonsense do I run on…_

_Action accepted: <secondary administrator <David>_

_It’s a start…_.

 

For Elizabeth to be listed as his operating source doesn’t cross his mind; he doesn’t trust her to not command him to do something that will put her at risk. He needs to get her home, recalibrate their directions, and find another pathway. If after readjusting to life on her home planet, she still wants to die at the hands of the Engineers so badly, then he’ll download their maps from the control deck himself and hand them over to her.

 

This corner of space was grim, and he was glad that Elizabeth was sleeping through it; other than rocks, and some debris of even older vessels than their own, there was nothing but a distant light of the system’s star, shrinking in the distance as they fled away into the dark. The outer reaches of systems were more precarious, and programming the hyper speed needed to reach Earth within Elizabeth’s lifespan was—

 

 _Lifespan_.

 

An all-new sort of pressure built on him until he could focus on nothing other than the word. Elizabeth would live to be at least 85, had she not dealt with the traumas on LL-227. Now, she would be more prone to certain illnesses surely; mental as well as physical. _Computing: lifespan estimate: 73._ That wasn’t enough. That wasn’t enough time to observe her, it wasn’t enough time to figure out how she works, to find what it was in her that made her dream of innocence when all she ever knew was death. His circuitry with proper upkeep could last indefinitely. The thought of only having stored memories of her, of watching his recordings of her instead of the films…there would be nothing new to learn from them. She must be observed in person.

 

He had been leaning over the control deck, and one of the boards let out an angry hiss. Upon inspection, there had been a saline drop of water spilled on it. _Useless waste of hydration fluids; bothers vision as well… Must remove that programming._ He blinked hard to clear his eyes of the rest of it. The hollow sense in his chest cavity was far different from that pleasant, electrical current he had on contact with her. _Possibly affects from her infection with the Engineer creature?_ Dangerous or no, he was curious for it again, and when the navigation was once again locked for the next dozen or so parsecs….he’d call forth the exact distances when they were closer.

 

… _Perhaps more data is needed_. A strand of her hair, a small prick of blood and he could work on it. She would still be sleeping, he could do it without alarming her and run any extra-medical exams on it long before she would awake.

 

David had given Elizabeth the captain’s private chamber, seeing that he didn’t require sleep, and human behavior in most cultures includes a desire for privacy for sleep and for dressing; and there was a bit of logic programming nagging at him, a little light flashing behind his eyes saying that to intrude on her would defeat the purpose of unlocking—and allowing energy to be spent on—another room.

 

She was sleeping still, but she had turned over onto her stomach, which couldn’t be good for the wound, even if it was covered. With a hand on her hip, he made motion to turn her back over, but she stirred slightly and he drew back. It would be nice to see her dreams again; surely they would be more intriguing than any of the number of films he had in storage, even if her dreams were only nightmarish recollections of recent events.

A strand of hair then, he could lift one off of the pillow she was clinging to, analyze it and then… _I could ask her; ask her when she’s awake. Observe her reaction. Listen to her protest for a moment before acquiescing. Watch that pert expression she makes with her lips and—_ and there it was again, down his spinal cord; though his nerves, the electrical currents from nowhere crept into his extremities and rose his internal temperature to one that would not be sustainable if he wanted to continue regular functions. She was undisturbed by it; and during transfers of electricity, or any other kind of energy, both objects usually would notice, and if what he was experiencing was similar to what she was, Elizabeth would have awaken by now. He brushed her hair off of her face, and the circuit in the back of his carbon-based skull threatened to overheat. _This…. is regrettable_. Clark Gable would have taken her in his arms to feel that kind of reaction, but data on _Gone With The Wind_ had shown that women began in the 20 th century to display negative reactions to Rhett dragging Scarlett up to bed.

 

Then again, to know, even a ghost of what it felt like for her to sleep, to find peace even in this situation. That would be something. To feel the calm of her heart in her dreams—not to just see her heart rate displayed on the cryo-sleep pod—in tune with the waves of electric running through him from every place he was making contact with her. _Achingly…human_ , he thought with distaste. But still…


	7. God Forgive You, But I Never Can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was pointed out to me that the summery said that this would cover their journey from the planet of Prometheus, to Paradise—but they’re currently heading back to Earth. Well, yes. Yes they are, but they are going to get to the planet from Covenant. I warned you all, this is going to be a long ride. I am also going to go through tonight and update previous chapters--plot and content will not change, don't worry, I just want to go over some redundant sentences and grammar. Also formatting, bc while it looks perfect in my word doc, it always posts...kinda wonky here.
> 
> Thank you all again for reading, I never expected to have an audience for this!

 

When Shaw finally woke up, she felt more alive than she had since Boxing Day. The spongy pillow proved suitably comfortable, and while a poor replacement for Holloway, it gave the illusion of not being alone as she slept. Her wound didn’t sting anymore, whatever David must have put on it numbed it, and there was very little blood under the bandages: a clean row of stiches framed by half-heeled holes from the staples. There was yet another tray of food beside her bed, and she ate in the silence of space. There was a small window on the other side of the room, with distant stars, doing nothing to add to the light levels, and she fumbled for the chalice of water in the green-lit chamber.

 

Existing the room, she could see the distant blue glow that directed her to the control room: its blue orbs of energy, the holos of nearby systems spinning silently, and in the center, the captain’s chair, rotating slowly, and David in it, nearly hidden by its size, staring up the lights of the universe with the eyes of a child.

_He is a child, for all his data and intelligence, everything he knows…he’s only a few years old._ Doesn’t excuse anything; and she doesn’t forgive him for all she’s been through, for all he’s caused, and it’s a strange sensation. Shaw was taught that forgiveness and mercy were vital—they was sacred. They were for the health and well-being of the soul _and David doesn’t have a soul_.

 

He didn’t even notice her, he was so enthralled by the stars in the room, and _David doesn’t have a soul. David isn’t real. David isn’t even a person, he’s an it, it’s an OBJECT._

…. _Objects cannot be guilty of murder._

            “Doctor Shaw?” he didn’t break his eye contact with the holograms to address her.

            “Yes?”

            “You’re looking better. I request that you continue to rest until the wound closes completely; then I’ll have you put to work.”

            “Are we on a solid course yet?” the thought of never seeing her creators ached; she had lost so much that she loved and now even the hope of these beings, these messengers of God…they were taken from her too.

            “After a fashion…there are no maps of the systems between sector nine, and where we are. I’ll need to regularly update the coordinates until we’re closer to our own galaxy.”

            “And the lights around, are these…?”

            “I like them, Doctor Shaw. So after I’m through with mapping, I leave them up.” She watches them lazily swirl around her another moment, and she feels his eyes on her again. In the dark, she can’t tell if his irises are glowing, or if it’s only a reflection. “There are books, documents, and films in the ships data now. I’ve uploaded them, from my own memory storage. You’re welcome to peruse them. Too long without mental stimulation is not conducive to human health.,” he paused, as if thinking, as if his computing needed time to think, before adding “I recommend _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_. ”

            “Thank you,” she said

            “You won’t be thanking me when I have you taming the Engineers garden,” he said it mostly to himself, but she might have heard. It bothered him little, and the more he thought on the small annoyances she brought him, in the things he said that bothered he, he wanted her in his head; to display the sounds and images on a computer so she could come in and know him—whatever there was to know, whatever personality was there beneath contempt and curiosity.

 

 

Shaw remembered that the egg shaped button by her bed was for the intercom, but she had to experiment with the rest in order to find out how to turn on more lights, and how to access the ship’s computer. By process of elimination, she managed to find out how, and similar to the control room but in a less spectacular fashion, holograms lit up the dark chamber. A screen in a low 2050-style resolution was in the center of it, and she tested it for touch sensitivity, to see if she could move the holo closer to her bed.

 

Immediately after figuring it out, she pulled up the crew data, and allowed herself, for the first time in the journey, to mourn. It would never matter that it was on Weyland’s orders, it would never matter that blaming him would do nothing, it wouldn’t improve her situation. On top of that, she was still uneasy around him, and if she proved to be ill company, his “liking” of her wouldn’t be enough to protect her.

 

            She saved Charlie’s file for last; reading under her breath, quiet as a prayer, each word of his file. There was a second page, his own writing, and she read through it twice. All of his hopes for finding anything were less spiritual than hers; he had only believed what he could be shown, and he wanted this journey to succeed, because he believed in Dr. Shaw’s ideas. All of his ideas were already proven, or they were hers. None of this of course, were revealed in the small description he gave to Weyland Industries, but she could hear between the lines of it

_you have enough faith for the both of us, El._

 

He had a mother, and two siblings on Earth. A roommate from college, a group of their peers he would often try and convince Shaw to join, despite her protests. She was not a social creature, and only spoke to an audience when needed. The day she went before her thesis board, she thought she was going to faint. Charlie said he knew she could do it, but he also had procured a bottle of anti-anxiety pills for her from one of his friends in a medical program.

 

She had professors who might remember her, a handful of old lab partners, two ex-boyfriends. She was, logically, the more expendable. Had she been the one to die, there would have been less people to inform on Earth, no one to pay damages to (since she and Charlie were not married), and he alone to miss her. The company would be legally required to pay for a funeral service, but what would that be, with no other mourners but Charlie? He’d have brought his friends, his friends who were only just on the warm side of cold shouldered to the girl who couldn’t drink more than a beer in a sitting, who couldn’t go ten minutes without bringing up archeology, linguistics, art, or religion. It was for both their sakes that Charlie eventually stopped asking if she wanted to go to the bars with them

 

Charlie knew no less and no more than Shaw did about space travel and survival, and the crew certainly appreciated his presence more than hers during their travel days before cryo-sleep. There’s no reason that she should have been the one allowed to live. _“I like you.”_ Somehow that concept was more pervasive than her fear that he would kill her yet. Shaw didn’t need more than her undergraduate psychology courses to know how dangerous it was when someone could understand want, but not distinguish right from wrong. Then again, if someone couldn’t tell good from bad, then certainly malice, certainly _evil_ didn’t play a hand in their actions? _Don’t think that way, not guilty by reason of insanity in a human is not the same as a computer who doesn’t mind killing because it’s ordered to_. A secondary voice in her head protested back, _he did apologize; he did understand that he caused pain._ _Yes, but he doesn’t know what pain_ is _to apologize for it._

 

She spent two full days in bed, going by the Earth clock and calendar in the ship’s computer, and would often wake up to fresh food and water by her bed. There was a water closet in her room, which was an interestingly complex situation, considering it was made for an eight-foot tall being, but not impossible, and preferable to most of the nightmarish latrines on archeological digs. No showers though, and on the third day she wandered out of her room, trying to program the ship’s lights to lead her to whatever the Engineers would have used.

Instead of the pure white and chrome showers separated by mid-height panels that she had seen on every other ship she had ever experienced, the room she was led to had several pits in the floor, three feet deep, with water spouts above with a design that Shaw couldn’t decide was phallic, or if she was skittish enough to assign the more cruel look to an innocent artistic element. Even with lights, the room was dark, but going by the molding on the floor, and the ribbed walls of the room, perhaps that was for the better.

 

Water gurgled into the pool as soon as she touched the spout, warm enough, but she would have bathed in ice given the chance, and minding the slippery floor and the depth of the bath, she lowered herself in. She searched for buttons to find a way to display the ship’s computer again, and is baffled by the sheer size of the media library. A collection of the ship’s own catalogue of cultural work and scientific books and film, language programs; then what must have been the collected digital media of the crew members allotted memory for personal entertainment. Morbid curiosity led her to the black and white icon of _Dr. Caligari,_ a movie nearly two centuries old that was still shown in film schools, but too old to have been shown with the late 20 th century and early 21st century works her theater showed. Upon loading, however, images didn’t read, only words. Even for a silent work, she could tell it was wrong.

 

“In order for this journey is to be as kind to your nerves as possible, please consider accepting my apology, for causing whatever harm I inadvertently wrought on you, or other members of the crew. I have a grasp on what it is to want: to want to continue operating, to want to learn, to want to…. create. I am not programmed to understand, or to seek to understand creation, faith, or any human who is not listed to me by an administrating source. Yet, I find that I want to, in the same way that I want to know more about you. If you will not forgive me, then please, consider—“

 

Shaw cut off the audio, and sunk lower into the water.

 


	8. interim: Mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners.

 

            There were her quiet, forceful steps into the control room that alerted him to her presence. Lawrence was walking along the derailed train, his white robes sometimes seeming like they were billowing off the projected screen and overlapping with the star maps of the controls. David wasn’t navigating, but they were lovely, and alleviated the darkness he has learned that he could not abide.

            “Careful you’re not dripping on the floor, I wouldn’t want you to slip,” he turned the chair from O’Toole’s moment of grace to a very damp, very miserable, irritable Dr. Shaw.

            “I accept your message, David. But I will never forgive you.”

            “Could I have expected anything else?”

            “No,” her voice was breathy, but resolute. “You ruined my life. You chose to let me live, and I will live with that guilt every day until I die. But you couldn’t understand that, and I can’t program you to, and even then…its not real—“

            When she says the damning phrase his voice is pleading: “Elizabeth—“ but she computes the tone of his voice as fast as he could have, and it comes back in a torrid flood of memories _what are you dreaming of now, Elizabeth_?

            “Oh my God…” _Charlie’s eyes aren’t blue Charlie’s eyes aren’t blue Charlie’s eyes aren’t—_

            “Are you alright?”

            “I don’t want you talking to me, looking at me, or touching me until I need these stiches out. Can you do that?” he nodded yes, leveling the risk factors of her not speaking to him again, or otherwise have damaged any chance he had. _Chance for what? You have less than a year before Elizabeth either deactivates you on Earth, or Weyland Industries does._

 

Shaw immediately went back to the baths, and hit, tapped, stroked, and pulled on the singular faucet until cold water poured out of it; needing the shock back into reality, into this obscene position her life has left her in _. “Elizabeth_ … _” the voice in my dreams was never Charlie’s—_ the realization hits her that he might have been intruding in on her dreams, somehow, and while she knows that can’t be true, she can’t help but let her mind construct him into a willful monster, and nightmares sink their claws into her mind, of him broken, stitched and patched, unable to die, exposed wires, but dripping human blood, _he’s in the machine, he’s connected to the ship, I can’t hide, he can find me whenever he wants_ … _._

He’s careful now, as the days progress, he’s quiet when he walks past her room; he washes her single change of clothes as she sleeps and replaces them; finds cloaks belonging to the Engineers and uses a pair of sheers from the garden to cut them to her height. He leaves her food when she’s sleeping, and takes to leaving a pitcher of water, and not just the chalice. He leaves her medications for her infection, with instructions written out in his type-face perfect writing. He hasn’t touched her once, and the dull, dreary feeling of low-power bothers him on and off, and he fears that he’ll shut down if he can’t talk with her soon. As he finds things in the arboretum that won’t poison her, he thinks on the anesthetics in the medical bay, the couple of hours he’d have with her unable to banish him, and he realizes that with want comes temptation. _I killed Holloway because it preserved her; I killed Holloway because I wanted her_.

 

Elizabeth memorizes the files of all the crew members in the first week she’s left alone. The second week she tries to read the Bible again, but the words burn and she’s left clutching cross, praying a silent, wordless prayer. In it she begs for preservation, strength, the souls of her crew, and most amorphous of all her petitions: that the computer in the captain’s chair would develop a sense of right, a sense of guilt, or the ability to feel pain. She does not want to forgive him (for this she begs the holy Father to forgive her) but she wants his words to be real, the apologies, the rationale. At the opening of the third week Elizabeth listens to music. Songs her father sang her at the mission, songs from after his death when she was again in England, songs Charlie liked, songs she played while studying. She never really had much patience for classical, but its softness was comforting, and she would fall into a drowsy half-state, neither awake nor asleep, but her mind tangentially engaged with the notes, one to another, layer upon layer of instrument and orchestra. There was at least a year before Earth, there were no more Engineers, and if God was there and she knew that she _must_ know He is, then this was His way of preserving her. She survived to return, to continue to seek; and of all those whom she could be trapped with…David was the only one capable of resuscitating the Juggernaut escort ship. She won’t forgive him (she’s barely able to admit to herself, she can’t forgive Him), but she’ll live. Whatever that means on this desert island, she’ll live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fade to black, quiet classical music plays in tune with strange, pulsating green lights embedded in the walls. There is a distant drip of water, quiet buzz of a hard drive, and the airless, breathless wind of space racing by.
> 
> (this isn't the ending, we're a long way off from that.)


	9. What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

As the days became weeks, Shaw had taken to walking the corridors, to lifting various tools in the arboretum, trying to keep up with her strict routine that she used to maintain. Two hours would be spent exercising: jogging and lifting, stretching, a visor on to watch the news, television, or to read on to keep her mind busy—it was the only reason she tolerated the work out. Here though there was nothing other than what could be pulled up on a holo-screen, and she had less patience. Being alone in her head was getting to her, as bad as the itch of her healing stomach did.

 _Should cut out those stitches_ ….

Sleep would not come on schedule,, and it was the middle of the night by GMT time when she walked to the medical bay. It was only when she examined them she saw that they were so small, so fine and close that human hands weren’t going to be much use on it.

She half wondered if he did it on purpose.

 

“David?” by nature, he could not be startled, but there was nothing that he could process as to why she would be in the medical bay this late—he came there each night to prepare her medications, so that he could leave them by her bedside: no matter how erratic her hours had become, she was usually asleep or in the baths at this hour.

“You want your stitches out?” there was logically nothing else she would be asking of him.

“Yes.” She was strong enough now, in little enough pain to lift herself onto the medical table, but she didn’t lay back. The action, though she had done it before, spoke to a deeper instinct in her, that to recline now would be to show submission.

“I’d like to remind you that you trusted me to put them in,” he was filling a small cup again with vials from the counter, an anesthetic.

“Numb it locally, even in normal circumstances this isn’t cause enough to be put under,” he replaced them and took up a syringe from her survival pack, filling it with a clear liquid.

“Of course, Doctor Shaw; the intention was so you would have to spend as little time as possible aware of your position.”

“Not necessary,” she held her hand out for the syringe, and he hesitated, but gave it to her. The pause wasn’t thinking over the positives for obliging, but mimicking how a human would react—he’s been doing this a lot these past weeks, practicing.

“Careful…” Elizabeth broke her eye contact with him, and pulled her shirt up to her breasts, and her pants down to below her hips, exposing only what was needed. She grit her teeth, and closed her eyes as she gave herself the injections. The sting was so small compared to what she had been through; he marveled that it bothered her at all. For a moment, he wants to understand pain.

“Go ahead,” she finally laid down flat on the table.

David removed the stitches with the same clinical coldness and mechanical precision that put them in. Shaw couldn’t feel anything, she was numb, but seeing him with silver tools standing over her wasn’t a sight she could handle, and she closed her eyes.

Wires in his face lifted the corners of his mouth into a slight smile, as she shut her eyes, and he waited a moment, maintaining the same pattern of movements as to not signal he was through, and as her eyes remained closed, he lowered his head to her belly and pressed his lips to the rough white scar tissue. She could feel nothing, but still he only took a few seconds; his tongue brushing a dot of blood from a removed stitch away. He rose from her, and put down his tools, the tray with the cut stitches and turned to tell her he was through—

Her eyes were wide open, surprise, fear, but mostly confusion—the expression was more universal of revulsion, but that she was repulsed by his actions yet again was not something he would tolerate. Thus confusion.

“Don’t ever lie to me again,” was all she said before swinging her legs off the table, recoiling them quickly as they brushed his. She pulled her pants up to her natural waist line, tugged her shirt down.

“My research says that humans often chastely kiss each other’s injuries. There is scientific evidence that a kind touch can relieve pain.”

She doesn’t know where to start with protesting, that he’s not a human, that that was not chaste, that he had no interest in relieving her pain, that he didn’t _know_ pain, that he’s the one responsible for the ‘injury’ in the first place—and instead she merely signals to him to stop talking. This cycle can’t continue if she’s to stay sane, and if trying her best to form an acquaintanceship with him, akin to what they had on the _Prometheus_ is the only way to create noise in her head to drown out the screaming, then so be it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know the chapters have been short (...shorter) the past couple days, but I'm trying to get at least one up a night, and I haven't had as much time. 
> 
> Aside from that, Poll: do you guys want to see through to the end of this first, or would you want to read its semi-sequel in tandem with it?


	10. The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatsoever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that updates have slowed, but I made the sin of posting before rereading, so I'm trying to make the earlier chapters reasonably presentable before I work too much on newer material.

“Count your blessings,” she had said to him when he asked her why she chose to study Engineer symbols at the control deck the following day. A colloquial phrase, often used even by non-religious people, he was aware of what it meant, but her connotation was what worried him; she was sharp when she said it, but she was always rather…tactless. Never coy, never playing, and very often she was direct even when she was speaking softly or kindly. He was not studying, he didn’t need to study, and repetition of data often annoyed him. Repetition of art or music however, that was…a pleasure. It was _enjoyable_. It wasn’t _Lawrence_ again, he was almost embarrassed at the thought of Elizabeth catching him viewing it multiple times, but this was…tolerable.

“Is that _Frankenstein_ , David?”

“Yes.”

“That movie was over a century old when I was born. There’s over a dozen better ones you know,”

“Yes, but I _like_ this one. It’s the first one. They had ideas, they had originality, and the rest merely…. _copies_.” Again there was that accent, that vaguely old British emphasis on the last, distasteful word. She wondered if he developed it from the films, or if whoever composed his voice for programming gave him that idiosyncrasy as well.

“How many David 8’s are there?”

“46, when the _Prometheus_ left. Mr. Weyland never told me, but the data is in my description file for the ship. You didn’t bother reading mine?”

“You weren’t listed as crew.” She doesn’t add that she found his lack of presence in the files strange enough to search for it, and that she found his data in with the files on the ship’s various computer systems. As far as Weyland was concerned, he was an object, a creation.

“Have you… ever read _Frankenstein_?” there is a smile, waiting for her affirmative response to fully stretch across his face, and she’s achingly tempted to say she hasn’t just to stop him.

“I did; my father never liked horror novels, but I remember reading it in the school’s library. I told him I was staying after for—“ _for robotics._ “For help with chemistry, he didn’t believe me, but…he allowed it.”

“You lied to him,”

“I was ten years old, I didn’t know better.” There was a silence, and she showed no sign of breaking it.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Immensely. It’s…the horrible reality of creation; the enormity of what it takes out of someone mentally…And Victor’s disgust at this thing that didn’t turn out _just_ as he wanted. I couldn’t fathom it, but,” again the conversation was getting dragged back to the hell-scape they left behind, like a ceaseless current, “I saw echoes of that hatred in the Engineers. Man is not perfect, and so many of us are cruel, but are we so vile that they needed to start fresh?”

“I think you’re projecting what you know onto them. It’s a very…delicate situation on both sides. And five hundred year old novel isn’t going to grasp the thoughts of beings that Shelley never knew existed.”

“Philosophically though,”

“Victor wanted perfection. What did the Engineers want?”

“I’ll never know now, will I?” she had abandoned the codes in front of her and for the film a few moments earlier, but it paused; the viewer turned to face her.

“You can always go back. With a full crew, aware of what you may be facing—prepared and healthy.”

“After losing the Prometheus and her entire crew, all of our supplies, all of the data and evidence, and Mr. Weyland himself—they’re going to mark the entire system as restricted…I’m never going back.”

“If you tell them what they stand to gain you will. I know the cooperation better than any human does, they will give you a more disposable crew, an older model ship, and a standard synesthetic, and let you go on the chance that you’ll bring back something more valuable than meteorite rhodium.”

            Elizabeth thought it over for a long moment, and he studied the micro-expressions of her face carefully—it was necessary, the slightest misreading of her would lead to silence, and go farther back, and as it was it had been a week since he had touched her last. She was choosing her reply carefully, calculating it for the wording that would offer the least number of possible interpretations. Humans took so long to do this, and it was both pitiable and _fascinating_.

            “You mean that you wouldn’t go back?”

It was so far from what he had been expecting her to say that it took a complete recomposing of possible replies “They’re going to—most likely—either permanently deactivate me, leave me on partial operations for robotics lab study, or else a full power down with possibility for occasional revival in a museum. I’m Mr. Weyland’s personal model, after all.”

            “Mr. Weyland is dead, he doesn’t own you—“

            “Either way, the company does. That’s what’s awaiting me. You however, are free to live out your days at archeological digs and geology laboratories, linguistics libraries—or die at the hands of your Engineers. You will have freedom without restrictions, my dear Doctor Shaw.” The casual term of endearment didn’t bother her as much as the backwards justice. Soul or not, living or not, Weyland Industries had to answer to creating something that could think for itself—the waste of all that science, of the lives that Weyland took for it, or even just the wonder for such a perfect machine.


End file.
